


the fabric of our life gets torn

by tosca1390



Category: Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-02
Updated: 2013-02-02
Packaged: 2017-11-27 21:00:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/666436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/pseuds/tosca1390
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Lizzie is very quiet on the drive to the airport. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	the fabric of our life gets torn

**Author's Note:**

> alternate title: NO MAKEOUTS :(((((((
> 
> For Jordan, Ari, Jess, Grace, Margo, Tori - the good eggs, basically.

*

Lizzie is very quiet on the drive to the airport. 

Will can’t say he’s very surprised. Besides, it isn’t as if he has anything productive to say. He had meant to send her in a car, and to get himself to Las Vegas (and to _Wickham_ ) as soon as possible – but he didn’t want to leave her alone, not like this. The look on her face, pale and drawn and a little desperate, was too reminiscent of his own, not so long ago. 

He couldn’t leave her. 

Keeping his eyes on the road in front of them, he tries to focus on anything other than the small hiccups to her breathing, the shallow sound of her exhales. NPR weaves softly in the background, but it’s classical music hour, and it’s just not soothing enough, or explosive enough. Gigi would say that this requires Green Day, or some band of the like; Will doesn’t have those albums available in his car. 

His knuckles are white as his fingers curve around the steering wheel. They linger at a stoplight, San Francisco a bustling sunny press around them. All he feels is the chill of her silence. 

“I think I knew,” Lizzie says at last. 

Glancing at her, he hesitates, taking a breath. “Knew what?”

She looks at her, abjectly miserable. Her gaze is glassy with unshed tears. She will not cry in front of him, or anyone, he thinks. They are more alike than either of them would like to admit. 

“Lydia – and Wickham. I saw the way she looked at him, the way he – “ she stops, looking down at her lap. Her fingers knot together there at her knees. All she has is her messenger bag, her laptop; he has sent Gigi to collect her things at her borrowed home, and will send them to her later today. 

“She was so mad at me,” Lizzie says at last, sad and soft. 

Will’s mouth turns as the light changes from red to green. He shifts his foot to the gas pedal and takes the turn. Just ten minutes more to the airport – ten minutes more to try, try and do something for her. 

“I think,” he says after a moment, his mind ticking back to years past, to Gigi defiant and sharp at the door of her apartment, “I think that if she was or is truly that angry with you, she may not have listened to you in the first place.”

He hazards a glance towards her. Lizzie watches him, mouth pursed together. Her hair is a mess of static red around her pale cheeks, her throat. The weak winter sunlight catches against the line of her cheek, the curling ends of her hair. 

“There’s little comfort in that, but you can absolve yourself of total blame, Lizzie,” he says quietly. 

Her mouth quirks just slightly. She touches her hair, tucks it behind her ears. “That’s kind of you,” she says before glancing away. There’s a stiffness to her shoulders that wasn’t there two hours ago. 

He thinks of the theatre tickets sitting in the top drawer of his desk, and wants to curse George Wickham to the skies. 

*

Will drops her off right in front of her gate. 

“My ticket – “

“Taken care of,” he says as he shuts the car door behind her. 

Lizzie adjusts her shoulder bag, tipping her head back to look up at him. They stand at the curb, watched by the security officers, jostled by people in suits and sweatpants dragging their luggage and their children behind them. He clenches his hands into fists at his sides, keeping her gaze. 

“This is too much, Darcy,” she says quietly. He feels a small part of his heart shrivel at the sound of his last name from her lips, the formality of it all. He wonders if he would have gotten a _Will_ tonight, at the theatre. 

“It’s what friends do, isn’t it?” he asks. He wants to touch her shoulder, the warm small of her back. 

She sighs and she looks so small, so cold in the sunshine. “Thank you,” she says, nodding before she moves to step past him. 

“Lizzie –“ he says abruptly, reaching out for her wrist. 

“You don’t - it’s okay,” she says, recoiling. Her eyes are hooded, her mouth pinched tightly. “I know how this works. I thank you for your generosity.”

He wants to protest, wants to tell her right there that he still loves her, that he wants to weather this _with_ her – but her flight is called over the PA system and she drops back and away, giving him the sharpest of waves. 

“Thank you,” she says for the umpteenth time, and he hates it coming from her mouth. 

“Lizzie – “ he tries again, but she’s gone, a blur through the sliding glass doors. He’s left standing at the curb, the security guards sending him pitying looks. 

Will waits until he’s sure she’s on the plane before he leaves, heads right to the loft, and packs his bag. 

*

Gigi gives him Lizzie’s phone number via text. 

_Use this wisely._

The private plane is a small one; Will can feel the walls of the plane shake with the wind. He hates small planes. 

_How else would I use it?_ He texts back, between calling IP providers and tracking down George Wickham’s Las Vegas movements. 

All he receives in return is: _Have you met you?_

He sets the phone down, his attention fixed on his laptop. If he checks his phone more often, the pad of his thumb dragging over a phone number he longs to call, he doesn’t think anything of it. 

*

_We have to have a discussion about the appropriate uses of Pemberley Digital applications._

Will sends that text to Gigi just before he ducks out of his hotel room. The Bellagio was kind enough to accommodate him on short notice; he likes the smaller rooms, even though they tried to push a suite on him. What for, he thought as he carried his bag up to the still-nearly-palatial room – it was just him. 

He thinks it might always just be him, at this point. 

Wickham is holed up in a cheap motel off the Strip; Lydia isn’t with him, according to Will’s information. It would make sense; Lydia is back at home, going to class. Will parks in the nearly-empty parking lot and sits in the car for a long moment. Las Vegas is hot, too hot for February. He likes seasons, likes slow increments of change; the temper and sweat building at the base of his neck is too much at once. 

His fingertips drag over the screen of his phone, over a phone number he’s memorized already. There is a message he could send; he spent hours agonizing over the words, the tone. 

Instead, he tucks his phone into his pocket and unfolds himself from the small rental car, stretching his cramped leg muscles. He shuts the car door with a heavy metallic thud, and walks across the sun-drenched parking lot. 

*

_Lizzie, I did not help you out of pity, or for your gratitude. I did it because it was right. I did it because that’s what people do for those they care for. I care nothing for Wickham and his plans; I thought only of you._

*

There are a collection of unsent messages saved to his phone, in his notes application. 

Will keeps them as he moves through his days post-Las Vegas. The website is down, thanks to his very talented team of lawyers and Wickham’s general idiocy; there is such a thing as privacy laws and consent in the United States, after all. The tape in all its forms, hard copy and electronic, have been sent to a Miss Lydia Bennet to do with as she sees fit. George Wickham is gone from the West Coast. 

Pemberley Digital remains the same. Gigi roams the halls between board meetings and interviews and tennis practice, looking at Will with sad wide eyes. Will takes meetings and tests the Domino prototype with Fitz, with Bing; he sends a note to Charlotte at Collins & Collins, asking for her advice on it. (Secretly, he wonders if he can steal her away and hire her at Pemberley, but that’s another story). It’s all as if Lizzie Bennet never wandered the halls, sat in on meetings, used the third-floor conference room for her videos; there’s a lone bowtie in his desk drawer he can’t bring himself to give back to the production wardrobe department. 

But there are unsent messages, meant for a phone number he’s saved and never used. He reads them with a Dewers on the rocks sometimes, as the days pass and he avoids Lizzie’s videos. He knows what happens, after all. He knows where he stands. 

Still, he can write and edit texts he’ll never send, to a woman he still loves. 

*

_Lizzie, I want –_

_Lizzie, I need –_

_I wish we could have gone to the theatre that night._

_I wish you did not still think so little of me._

_My affections and wishes have not changed._

*

Bing calls, two weeks after Lizzie leaves. He is all smiles, all joy; Will thinks he can hear Jane Bennet in the background. 

He smiles into the phone, but there is another part of his heart, withering. 

“We’re going back to Netherfield this weekend, Will. You should come,” Bing says. 

Will leans back in his office chair, face schooled into flat lines. It’s instinct. 

“I don’t know if that would be a good idea,” he says slowly. 

“Jane thinks it is,” Bing says, his voice dropping low. “And I do too. I saw how you guys looked at each other in the videos.”

“So you have seen them all,” Will says evenly. 

“Yes, and you should come with us,” Bing says firmly. He is confident, forward, determined; Will thinks it sounds good on him. 

“Perhaps,” he says, and makes his excuses to go; there is a meeting on the third floor in ten minutes on the Domino beta testing. 

In his drawer, the theatre tickets are still where he left them with hope two weeks ago. 

*

_I am terrified of your reaction. I cannot hear the word no come from you again._

_You are and have always been the only person with this power over me._

*

Charlotte, who has come up specifically at his request, is all tired smiles at the end of the meeting. 

“I’m surprised you’re still here,” she says as he walks her to the front lobby. Gigi walks with Mr. Collins, suffering in resigned silence. 

“Why is that, Ms. Lu?” he asks, pausing at the glass sliding doors. 

Charlotte’s mouth turns, eyes narrowing. “You haven’t been watching the videos?”

“I thought – I thought it not prudent, considering the manner of Lizzie’s departure,” he hedges, feeling the flush curl up past the collar of his shirt and up his throat. 

Smiling, Charlotte touches his arm. “At least watch the latest one. Trust me.”

It’s all Will can do not to rush up to his office at breakneck speed; but he is a paragon of patience and composure, as Gigi often fondly rolls her eyes over. Once Charlotte and Collins are safely away, however, it’s a different story. 

With the sun setting behind him, Will sits in his office and opens up Lizzie’s channel on his browser for the first time in two weeks. She is smiling in the still frame of her latest video, her hair pulled back from her pale face; the video is only thirty seconds long. 

He presses play. 

“There’s no Lydia, no crying, no drama this time around, folks. It’s just me, and I just have one thing to say. My name is Lizzie Bennet, and if you’re watching this, Will Darcy, I hope I get to see you again soon.”

She smiles right into the camera, and the video ends. The post date is from yesterday. 

Will calls Bing, and says he will join them this weekend in the trip home. He’s not an idiot. 

*

_Please, Lizzie, don’t trifle with me. I don’t know how I’ll bear it._

*

Maybe one day, Will can show her these messages, and they’ll smile and laugh. 

Maybe that day is closer than he thinks. 

*


End file.
